Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Homerton and Barts Health: improving patient care together

Right now Homerton University Hospital and Barts Health are attracting a lot of publicity on social media because they have agreed to securely share data and information, such as medical history, medications and care treatment plans subject to patient permission, to improve the quality of patient care. What this means to you the patient is if you previously visited one of Barts Health's hospitals (The Royal London, Mile End, Whipps Cross, St Bartholomew's or Newham)  and then later present at Homerton with a condition clinical staff  can see most of the records Barts Health hold about you, for instance: discharge summaries, diagnoses, investigations, medications and results.

All of us will go to a clinic or A&E reception at some time and when we give our details we assume the information that the staff are looking at on the computer screens contains our NHS records; 'it’s all one NHS' so each hospital has access to the same information, right? This is not the case and so what Homerton and Barts Health have agreed to do is big news.

Why, you may ask, does the NHS not have a single database after all one branch of a bank can access your account details as much as another? The answer is to do with cost and logistics. This not something which can be prescribed from above; it has to grow from the bottom up and this is part of that growth. A small network, Barts Health and Homerton, can grow as other organisations in East London share their data and join the network. It means that wherever you live, the healthcare services closest to you will have the information they need to make fast and informed decisions about your care and so your treatment can begin sooner than otherwise.

The professionals helping to build this network such as Niall Canavan, Homerton’s Director of IT and Charles Gutteridge, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Barts Health are rightly very excited saying that if on-going discussions with other providers conclude successfully then we could soon see an east London health record system with summarised views and in the future exchange of data for about 2.5 million people. That’s just in East London.

As similar initiatives around the country start joining the dots in search of a fully integrated network and as patients use Apps that are being developed to give them greater independence so we will become fully networked. That might sound unattractive to some but think of the benefits; no time needed to find out about allergies or pre-existing conditions so that diagnoses can be made more speedily and with confidence, considerably less cost, more effective patient care and faster recovery rates. For those of us in or approaching old age in East London this is great news, for our children and grandchildren it affords a very bright future. People are excited about this; we all should be. 

Last updated on 29 September 2016.

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Child Protection-Information Sharing (CP-IS) project

As an example of Homerton's early adoption of new systems considered to offer better patient care this is a recent press release referring to a project designed to improve the protection of vulnerable children.

The Child Protection Information Sharing scheme (CP-IS) is a major initiative sponsored by NHS England and led by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), the national provider of information, data and IT systems for commissioners, analysts and clinicians in health and social care. The project links the IT systems of NHS unscheduled care organisations to those used by social care child protection teams. Unscheduled care settings include local authority children’s services (social care), hospital emergency departments, minor injury units, walk-in centres in CCGs/primary care, maternity units, GP out of hours, paediatric wards, and ambulance services.

A central national system holds details of all children who have a child protection plan or are classed as looked-after. National rollout of CP-IS  is planned for completion by 2018 and will connect 1,230 NHS settings and 152 local authorities for the protection of vulnerable children in England.

Homerton is the first NHS care provider organisation to go live with real-time access to the new system. Child protection information is transmitted securely from local authority IT systems to the central NHS Spine and Homerton staff can access the Spine and incorporate CP-IS information into key workflows that notify care providers when they are treating a vulnerable child.

The benefits for patients and staff:

• Improves assessment of children presenting in unscheduled care settings through access to better supporting information
• Delivers more focussed communication between social care and health care concerning these groups of children, leading to improved intervention to prevent the ongoing abuse or neglect of a child
• Builds a stronger more transparent relationship with social care workers due to information being shared on the system
• Saves time as NHS staff will no longer need to produce lists or enter data manually.

Last updated on 26 September 2016.

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New mobile X-ray for Neonates

Treatment for Neonates can now be decided at cotside with a mobile x-ray.
Homerton University Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit has installed an FDR Go DR mobile x-ray unit from Fujifilm.
Radiographer Robert Higham said: “The speed of the image availability on the system really helps the clinicians decide on the correct course of treatment at the bedside. This is crucial when treating neonatal babies.”

In the photograph: A&E superintendent radiographer Cheryl Hill, radiographer Robert Higham, superintendent radiographer Amy Law and Fujifilm account manager Iain Sims

Last updated on 03 August 2015.

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New state of the art means of managing patient records and care

The Acute Clinical Excellence (ACE) Programme is the Homerton’s new comprehensive electronic clinical patient record system. This will have vital signs recorded direct from the BP machines and e-prescribing as well as patient documentation for the entire multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, midwives, therapists and pharmacists involved in the treatment of patients. 

This represents the hospital's latest effort to improve patient experience and means safer prescribing and administration, enhanced clinical decision support, improved communication and sharing of information.  

This represents a major investment in a major technological advance in patient record keeping.

Last updated on 30 June 2015.

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Nurses and Midwives day

We celebrated nurses and midwives day on 20th May

Last updated on 27 May 2015.

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